Business and book website: wordwhisperer.net
Author of SETTLE FOR BEST: SATISFY THE WINNER YOU WERE BORN TO BE; SERVAL SON: SPOTS & STRIPES FOREVER; DeFOREST KELLEY: A HARVEST OF MEMORIES; FLOATING AROUND HOLLYWOOD; LET NO DAY DAWN THAT THE ANIMALS CANNOT SHARE(order at Amazon); and THE ENDURING LEGACY OF DeFOREST KELLEY(order at http://store.payloadz.com/go?id=382995)

Saturday, November 8, 2008

I Was a Swinger Today!

Hey, if the title of this blog didn't get your attention, you must be dead! HA HA HA HA HAI went to the soccer field at Central Avenue School this morning to watch grand niece Casey, almost 8, in her final game, but ended up pushing her sister Jamie (you met her in yesterdays' blog) and another wee one named Addison (a total stranger whose parents were watching another soccer game in a different field) on swings. I stood between the two swings, more or less, and pushed first one, then another, leaning back and forth each time either of them came my way. Tonight my arms feel like they've been tweaked pretty significantly -- by tomorrow I may be in the throes of serious regret for pushing them both for over 45 minutes. "Higher!" "Higher!" When I well and truly wore out, I told them I had to stop, so they decided to go to the play area with different kinds of slides, where both girls -- and a third, older and heftier girl -- began to slide down a fireman's pole. All three were scared at first, so I had to reach up and be sure they were firmly attached (hands and feet) around the pole before I allowed them to slide down by letting go of their rear ends. We did that a good 25 times each (at least I was using different muscles for this new task); then Addy's dad came for her (introducing himself, thanking me, and asking me how much he owed me for babysitting! Funny guy!). Then Jamie and the hefty girl wanted to swing from the monkey bars. Both were too little to make it from bar to bar without some serious help, so I was back and forth with them, holding them by the heels so they could do their thing. After the other gal was taken home by her parent, Jamie decided we should play "keep away" in a soccer field that had been relinquished by another team. So we did that for a while. I had to keep chasing Jamie down... only managed to get the ball from her about three times, because she has been well-trained (already) by her mom, Wendy (a great soccer player and the girls' coach). Because I couldn't get the ball from her, I didn't have much chance to control it and slow down, so I was all over the bloody field, wondering when Jamie would get tired. She never did. T'was me who got tired!So if I need help getting out of bed tomorrow, it will be no surprise! I spent an hour and a half playing with kids who wanted to get things done -- with lots of help, of course!This afternoon I sat in the recliner to watch a little TV and within three minutes was fast asleep!If I'd just do this kind of thing every day, I wouldn't have a weight problem, would I?The weather was sensational today. It was 62 degrees... almost a record for this time of year up here in the Pacific NorthWet. (The record is 64 degrees.) It felt like a Chinook wind was blowing most of the day.I fear we're going to get some serious rain and cold soon, though. These are the waning days of fall. It's pitch dark by five at night and doesn't get light again till close to six. On December 21st (shortest day of the year) we'll only get eight hours of daylight in this latitude. Not a lot of fun, but during the summer we get sixteen hours of daylight, so it all balances out. It's just hard to remember this time of year. Jackie has SADS (Seasonally Affecting Disorder, or whatever it's called), so I have to keep her spirits up by acting like a silly lunatic whenever I go over to her side of the abode. She started playing Christmas movies and plays Christmas music in the car starting about mid-October as the sun sets earlier, to keep her mood up. She loves Christmas and said if it didn't come in December she doesn't know how she'd get through winter. So we're fa la la la la'ing and laughing all the way... and walking when we can. It's helping us both, although I don't have SADS. I have the HAPPIES because Obama will be our President in less than three months and until then I can just watch his young family and grin, and grin, and grin... and house sit for critters and their people, and write... and... play with the grand nieces whenever they come within range...If I wasn't so broke, I'd be the happiest lunatic on the planet! So here's proof that you don't need to be well off to be happy. You just need to be in the thick of things and count your blessings!If I started counting my blessings right now I wouldn't reach the end of my list until May 18, 2010! You, too?

About Me

A
Pacific Northwest native, Kristine M. Smith transformed her copywriting
business from a struggling start-up to a going concern in near-record time.
Prior to launching her own copywriting business, Kris served as a fledgling copywriter
for a local on-hold script production company, where she won Employee of the
Quarter the last two quarters she worked there.

Kris’s
freelance writing career was launched by actor DeForest Kelley more than forty
years ago. It was Kelley and his wife Carolyn who encouraged Kris to try
Hollywood on for size, which she did from 1989 to 2003. Kris served as Mr.
Kelley’s personal assistant and caregiver during the final months of his life
and presented heartfelt sentiments about her mentor at Paramount Studios'
memorial service for him in 1999. She has written two books about him: DeForest
Kelley: A Harvest of Memories and The Enduring Legacy of DeForest Kelley:
Actor, Healer, Friend. An enhanced version of Harvest with a new title and 50+ pages of riotous additional anecdotes will debut during Star Trek's 50th Anniversary in 2016.

In
Hollywood, Kris served as an administrative assistant and secretarial floater
to writers, producers and—later—information technology professionals at various
studios. Most of her Hollywood career was spent at Warner Bros. Studios in
Burbank where she served as an executive secretary for the VP of Software
Development and as a Hardware Lease Administrator. Kris’s most notable creative
endeavor at Warner Bros. was writing the copy for an intranet website to help
newly-arrived secretaries learn the ins and outs of serving on the WB campus in
record time. The website earned her a monetary reward and the coveted (don’t
laugh!) Carrot Award (Bugs Bunny runs da joint, ya know!); the accompanying Certification
of Appreciation was co-signed by the head of the Human Resources Department and
her boss.

The
author of seven books, Kris’s sixth title, Serval Son: Spots and Stripes Forever
(You are responsible for all you tame)—a cautionary true story about what it’s
like to own, and be owned by, a wild cat for seventeen years—reached the #2 and
#4 spots at Amazon in two niche categories when it debuted in September 2011.

Kris’s
newest title, Settle for Best: Satisfy the Winner You Were Born to Be, is a chapter-by-chapter
breakdown of the twenty commonalities of millionaire philanthropists as
discerned by Napoleon Hill in his seminal 20th century work, Think
and Grow Rich. Each chapter contains words of encouragement and
instructions to entrepreneurs and anyone else who wants to leave a business,
personal, or family legacy that will resonate for generations to come. Settle
for Best stood at #1 in the Motivational Self-Help category at Amazon for three
days when it debuted.